01
Stop one
Capilla Tabernacl
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 17g Tennis String Set: It's a chapel. It's plain. Fine, I guess. Built 1899, oldest surviving building in the whole town, which was only founded in 1886 in the Welsh colony of the Chubut valley, and this was the religious and social centre of that entire community, and Trelew is still one of the only places on Earth outside Wales where the Eisteddfod is regularly held, and the language and the chapel culture are still going in the valley, and. No. Nope. I don't know why I know that. Moving on.
02
Stop two
Hotel Touring Club
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 17g Tennis String Set: A bar. Wow. Groundbreaking. Opened 1918, fitted out with every modern convenience of its day, which is how it ended up as the meeting place of the entire Chubut valley. And then the guest list is Julio Argentino Roca, an actual Argentine president, plus Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who flew the Patagonian airmail routes, plus Juan Manuel Fangio, who is only a racing driver in the way the sun is only a light. It's still a hotel. The bar is untouched. That's kind of cool. Don't tell anyone I said that.
03
Stop three
Teatro Español
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 17g Tennis String Set: A theatre. Amazing. Truly. Inaugurated Thursday 12 February 1920, and I don't know why I know it was a Thursday, by the Spanish mutual aid society of Trelew, back when Spanish immigration had reached practically every part of Patagonia. It became the principal venue for theatre and music in the whole region and it still is, it hit its centenary in 2020, and the Spanish vice-consulate works out of the same building, which is a weird thing to have downstairs from a stage. Anyway. It's fine.
04
Stop four
Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio
Solinco Heaven Strings Hyper-G 17g Tennis String Set: Dinosaurs. Okay. That's actually. No. It's fine. It's fine. Established December 1990, more than 17,000 fossils out of Patagonia, including Patagotitan mayorum, one of the largest dinosaurs known to anybody, which is why one skeleton eats an entire gallery lengthwise. Named for Egidio Feruglio, Italian geologist, came out here in 1925 doing petroleum work for YPF and basically laid the foundations of Patagonian stratigraphy on the side. And it's a working research centre, not just a museum. Can we stay here. Not because I care.
Forgive it — it feels things. Hyper-G is a co-polyester monofilament drawn with a squared profile, and this is the 17 gauge, 1.20mm, one careful step below the 1.30mm and all the more sensitive for it. The set is 40 ft / 12.2 m, enough for one racquet and no more, which is somehow the right amount for a string like this; the reel runs 656 ft / 200 m, for the unsentimental.
Trelew was founded in 1886 by Welsh settlers in the Chubut valley, and a place built by people who crossed an ocean on a feeling will understand the appeal.
The four edges are where the ache lives. A round string lets the ball leave; this one holds on a moment longer, drags it into spin and gives it back changed. At 1.20mm you feel every one of those moments through the handle. TruTension keeps the bed from going slack in the first hour, so the string is still telling you the truth at the end of the evening.
You will get use out of it everywhere from the plain brick chapel of Capilla Tabernacl, which has stood on its street corner since 1899, to the reed edges of the Laguna Cacique Chiquichano, a lagoon sitting in the middle of Trelew with black-necked swans going slowly about their business.
It is also perfect for an hour under the poplars on Plaza Independencia in Trelew, on a bench by the white and green bandstand while somebody's band works through something in a minor key. Solinco makes this string in seven gauges, 1.35mm at 15L down to 1.05mm at 20g, and 17 is the romantic one — slender enough to feel everything, substantial enough to last the evening.
Nothing lasts forever, and it would like you to know it is at peace with that.
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